peanut butter blossoms

peanut butter blossoms, originally uploaded by pr9000.

I'm watching "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" on HBO ... and it dovetails nicely with an email my friend Chrissy ¹ sent to me -- a contest from the Washington Post, in which people are asked to describe their favorite movie, and why ...

I may or may not send this in.

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The first time I saw "Rushmore" I cried. The next three times (that same week) I was speechless.

"Rushmore" made sense to me; like Max, I lived more in my mind than the world, and when confronted with banal reality, I was very talented at retreating inside further.

At one point Max says to Mr. Blume (Bill Murray) about their shared love interest, Ms. Cross, that "she was my Rushmore." This movie was my college years; I could tell friends "This is what it felt like."

When Max and Ms. Cross dance at the end, it was my "unrequited crush fantasy" in celluloid -- the music, scene, even the film speed (of course my fantasies have a framerate). Everything was exactly as I'd have done it ... except, of course, I never did.

Max finally got his to work, if only for one song. I wish I'd been that lucky.

***

¹I knew her as "Chrissy" but her email comes in as "Christina," which leads to the question -- what's the controlling legal authority for names? What you knew someone as 10 years ago, or their self-chosen email name?